He aims to elucidate their respective function at the atomic level in order to understand their dysfunction underlying several neurodegenerative diseases and cancer-types.

He studies these large molecular protein complexes (~500–800 kDa) by sophisticated NMR-methods, to be able to derive structural and dynamical adaptions of these complexes at the atomic level in solution. These NMR-studies are complemented and combined with additional information from other structural biology and biophysical methods.

These integrated structural biology approaches are used to understand the possible allosteric mechanism of these proteins and their respective complexes underlying their functionality. This knowledge will be used to understand the effect of disease-related mutations and for the subsequent design of either antibiotics or drugs.

International Collaborations

Björn Burmann has extensive international collaborations, which currently include researchers from Columbia University, New York University, University of Orléans, ETH Zurich, and Technical University Munich, in addition to multiple active local collaborative projects.

Björn Burmann was appointed a Wallenberg Academy Fellow in 2017. He has also been awarded the Anatole Abragam Price for a Young Investigator in 2017 for his pioneering contributions to the determination of structure and dynamics of chaperone-client complexes at atomic resolution by solution NMR.